In March, the ongoing conflict in Syria will enter its fifth year. Syrians have lost so much in that time — the Syrian who has not lost their life has lost several years of it because of a destroyed home, a faded business, or a family that has been torn apart by death or separation. But for many Syrians, what’s been lost most of all is any sense of hope.

We are a group of 25 ambitious students at Yarmouk Private University (YPU). We’re between the ages of 20 and 22, we live in Damascus, and we are organizing TEDxYPU for one simple reason: We want to bring a spark of hope to the sadness and difficulty in our country. We know that many Syrians will not be able to join us, and nothing makes us sadder than that, but we want to have a positive impact, no matter how small, on the students who will attend.

Syrian youth have very limited access to opportunities. Young students living in Damascus need inspiration, and our hope is to provide it through talks given and ideas shared. Despite all that has happened in the past five years, we want to continue to seek the best that we can attain. Doing this is not easy. But this is the example that we want to set, the one idea that we want to spread.

We have worked for seven months to organize this event, and we have invited an incredible group of Syrians to speak — our program includes those with a wide range of expertise, from tech leaders to a linguist, a pediatrician, a conductor. We have invited people from our city as well as people from outside Syria who will join us through Skype. This is the first TEDx event to be held at a university in Syria and every day we have new ideas, new thoughts on how to make it even better. We are enthusiastic and excited about our plans, confident that our event will have a positive impact on people’s spirits.

We are Syrians; we have suffered ourselves. But we believe we should create a space for positive action. As are all TEDx events, this is non-political in nature, focusing instead on bringing together communities and hearing ideas percolating at the local level. We want to focus on the human spirit rising up through the devastation here.

As we enter another year of conflict, Syrians cannot keep their futures waiting. We all have suffered. We want to do something positive, for which we ask for the support of every Syrian, especially those who are doing great things outside the country.

We hope that our event will be a message to the world that Syrians still have hope.

It’s a piece of cake. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. Why add fuel to the fire? Idioms are those phrases that mean more than the sum of their words. As our Open Translation Project volunteers translate TED Talks into 105 languages, they’re often challenged to translate English idioms into their language. Which made us wonder: what are their favorite idioms in their own tongue?

Below, we asked translators to share their favorite idioms and how they would translate literally. The results are laugh-out-loud funny.

The idiom: Tomaten auf den Augen haben.Literal translation: “You have tomatoes on your eyes.”What it means: “You are not seeing what everyone else can see. It refers to real objects, though — not abstract meanings.”

The idiom: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof.Literal translation: “I only understand the train station.”What it means: “I don’t understand a thing about what that person is saying.’”

The idiom: Die Katze im Sack kaufen.Literal translation: “To buy a cat in a sack.”What it means: That a buyer purchased something without inspecting it first.Other languages this idiom exists in: We hear from translators that this is an idiom in Swedish, Polish, Latvian and Norwegian. In English, the phrase is “buying a pig in poke,” but English speakers do also “let the cat out of the bag,” which means to reveal something that’s supposed to be secret.

The idiom: Det är ingen ko på isenLiteral translation: “There’s no cow on the ice.”What it means: “There’s no need to worry. We also use ‘Det är ingen fara på taket,’ or ‘There’s no danger on the roof,’ to mean the same thing.”

The idiom: Att glida in på en räkmackaLiteral translation: “To slide in on a shrimp sandwich.”What it means: “It refers to somebody who didn’t have to work to get where they are.”

The idiom: Det föll mellan stolarnaLiteral translation: “It fell between chairs.”What it means: “It’s an excuse you use when two people were supposed to do it, but nobody did. It has evolved into the slightly ironic phrase, ‘It fell between the chair,’ which you use when you want to say,‘Yeah, I know I was supposed to do it but I forgot.’”

The idiom: เอาหูไปนา เอาตาไปไร่Literal translation: “Take ears to the field, take eyes to the farm.”What it means: “It means ‘don’t pay any attention.’ Almost like ‘don’t bring your eyes and ears with you.’ If that were possible.”

The idiom: ไก่เห็นตีนงู งูเห็นนมไก่Literal translation: “The hen sees the snake’s feet and the snake sees the hen’s boobs.”What it means: “It means two people know each other’s secrets.”

The idiom: ชาติหน้าตอนบ่าย ๆLiteral translation: “One afternoon in your next reincarnation.”What it means: “It’s never gonna happen.”Other languages this idiom exists in: A phrase that means a similar thing in English: “When pigs fly.” In French, the same idea is conveyed by the phrase, “when hens have teeth (quand les poules auront des dents).” In Russian, it’s the intriguing phrase, “When a lobster whistles on top of a mountain (Когда рак на горе свистнет).” And in Dutch, it’s “When the cows are dancing on the ice (Als de koeien op het ijs dansen).”

The idiom: Pūst pīlītes.Literal translation: “To blow little ducks.”What it means: “It means to talk nonsense or to lie.”Other language connections: In Croatian, when someone is obviously lying to someone, you say that they are “throwing cream into their eyes (bacati kajmak u oči).”

The idiom: Хоть кол на голове тешиLiteral translation: “You can sharpen with an ax on top of this head.”What it means: “He’s a very stubborn person.”

The idiom: брать/взять себя в рукиLiteral translation: “To take oneself in one’s hands.”What it means: “It means ‘to pull yourself together.’”Other languages this idiom exists in: Translators tell us that there is a German version of this idiom too: “Sich zusammenreißen,” which translates literally as “to tear oneself together.” And in Polish, the same idea is expressed by the phrase, “we take ourselves into our fist (wziąć się w garść).”

The idiom: Quem não tem cão caça com gatoLiteral translation: “He who doesn’t have a dog hunts with a cat.”What it means: “You make the most of what you’ve got.” Basically, you do what you need to do, with what the resources you have.

The idiom: Słoń nastąpił ci na ucho?Literal translation: “Did an elephant stomp on your ear?”What it means: “You have no ear for music.”Other languages this idiom exists in: Our translators tell us that in Croatian, there’s also a connection made between elephants and musical ability in the phrase, “You sing like an elephant farted in your ear (Pjevaš kao da ti je slon prdnuo u uho.).” But in the Latvian version, it’s a bear who stomps on your ear.

The idiom: Iets voor een appel en een ei kopenLiteral translation: “Buying something for an apple and an egg.”What it means: “It means you bought it very cheaply.”Other language connections: Spanish translator Camille Martínez points out out that when something is expensive in English, you pay two body parts for it (“it cost me an arm and a leg”), whereas in Spanish you only pay one — either a kidney (“me costó un riñón”) or an eye (“me costó un ojo de la cara”).

Two guys, a giant red X and an extremely unreliable compact car on a journey from London to Ulaanbaatar. Sounds like an ideal vacation, right?

For Nate Mook — organizer of TEDxMidAtlantic, TEDxMogadishu and TEDxEverest — there’s no other way he’d rather spend his time off. This past July, he and Steve Garguilo, organizer of TEDxJNJ, set out on the “Mongol Rally,” an unmapped journey taken each year by adventurists around the world across 10,000 miles of mountains, deserts and grasslands. Only Mook and Garguilo’s journey, documented on the blog TwoGuysandanX.com, had a greater purpose: they visited 32 TEDx organizers in 15 cities on their journey, under the loving guidance of Google Maps.

“What better way to see the scale of the TEDx community than to drive around the world and meet amazing people in their communities?” asks Mook. From experiencing major car trouble in Kazakhstan (apparently it’s possible to pop two tires with one pothole), to drinking delicious wine in Moldova, Mook and Garguilo received warm welcomes from TEDx’ers everywhere they went.

“That’s the amazing thing about TEDx — whether we were in Azerbaijan or Mongolia, we were meeting people that were really more similar to us than different,” he says.

The pair poses with some of the 32 TEDx organizers they met on their trip. Photo: Nate Mook and Steve Garguilo

For instance, Mook and Garguilo spent one afternoon with a TEDxMinsk organizer, talking about the challenges his team faces in putting on a TEDx event in such a remote location. Later, they went out for beers, to a bar where a heavy metal band happened to be playing — loudly. After screaming the lyrics to many Russian songs, the heavens parted and the band began playing a familiar song — the theme to “Ghostbusters.”

And then there’s the X. Garguilo had made a giant red X (using the fine art of TEDx letter-making) to bring on their cross-continent journey. It was the perfect travel companion; a light packer, super laid-back and always on time. But it was promptly lost by the airline on the very first leg of their journey to London. Not to worry. A TEDx team in Lithuania, after showing Mook and Garguilo around their city, loaned them another giant red X to take on the trip. “This ‘X’ will find itself back on the TEDxVilnius stage for their next event,” writes Mook, “but by then will be covered in signatures from TEDx organizers along our route.”

Traveling to places with varying landscapes, infrastructures and resources, Mook says he realized just how difficult it is for some TEDx teams to organize events. “It’s so cool to see people overcoming these challenges to put on great events,” he says.

For him, watching the team in Mongolia in action was especially interesting because “that’s not a place you’d think TEDx would happen. But they have a very vibrant community there.”

The x sits atop the remnants of a fishing vessel in the now dried up Aral Sea. Photo: Nate Mook and Steve Garguilo

And then there was that time when Mook and Garguilo noticed a strange smell that started giving them headaches. Turns out their car had been leaking fuel for days, and it finally broke down in a small town in Belarus, where they found a mechanic and explained their problem by playing charades. “Everyone was always super helpful and interested in us,” recalls Mook, “because they were surprised to to see foreigners driving through their cities in a car covered in stickers.”

Though their road trip took a little longer than they expected, Mook and Garguilo both say that their time traveling was enlightening. “Everyone was so eager to meet with us, get to know each other, and swap stories,” says Mook.

So what did people want to talk about? The future. They wanted to share their hopes for their cities and countries, and they wanted to hear outsider’s perspectives too. As Mook puts it, “Despite all of our geographic differences, we’re still all rallied around this same idea.”

Mook and Garguilo reach the finish line of their journey in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Photo: Nate Mook and Steve Garguilo

Before Danielle Thomson was our TED Prize researcher, she wrote trivia for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and spent years finding difficult-to-source info for The Late Show with David Letterman. And she has quickly established herself as our staff secret weapon. When one of us can’t get our hands on a piece of information that we need, we turn to Danielle and — voila! — there it is.

We asked Danielle to share some of her best research tips to help you in those “why can’t I find this?” moments. Here’s what she had to say:

There are no new questions. Have a research question? Trust me, it’s been asked before. Put your exact question into quotations as a search term, and you will find, at the very least, a lead to your answer. Want to find out how much of the ocean has been explored? Type “How much of the ocean has been explored” into your search engine, and you will likely get your answer..

Didn’t get your answer from the above? Try working backwards. If the answer you are looking for doesn’t pop up, then work backwards from how you think the answer would be phrased. Try out different chunks of the question to get you going in the right direction. With that ocean example, you are likely looking for a percentage — so instead, search the phrase “percent of the ocean” and see if that gets you any closer..

If searching for something less specific, channel your inner writer. If you are trying to research something that has the potential for multiple answers, then think about common phrasings that a writer would use to describe the subject. For example — if you were searching for stories about people who collaborated after meeting at TED, search for phrases like “first met at TED,” “were introduced at TED,” or “while attending TED,” as those terms would likely be used by a writer to explain the concept..

Nexis is nice, but Google is great. Yes, there are pricy database research tools that are wonderful to have access to. But Google is my search engine of choice — with the advent of blogs and online archives, it is often actually better and more complete. While it depends on the scope and timeframe of your research project, if you are searching for breaking or current news issues, start with Google..

Google doesn’t have your answers? Google Books might. As much as I love — and begin all of my searches with — a simple Google search, Google Books is my favorite resource when a deeper dive is necessary. A majority of the books are fully readable within the digital database, and the ability to search for phrases within the books is a game changer. Use tips #1, 2, and 3 while searching through the pages of a book, and a wealth of information will appear..

Follow your leads — even if they don’t feel like leads! When you are searching for things on Google, never stop searching at page one. Not even page two. Follow the results to at least page six or seven as smaller, less popular articles that seemingly have less relevance might hold the key to what you are looking for. Never give up. The Internet, as we know it, holds all the answers!.

Message boards aren’t just for sports fans and gossip. No matter what issue you are researching, there is very likely a community that has formed around that issue. It might feel a little old school, but if you hit a complete and total wall, consider joining a relevant message board and asking your question, or even calling up that association. There are many people with expertise in your subject who might be willing to put you on the right track..

If it feels creepy, it means you’re close. This advice pertains more to research about a public figure. Oftentimes, the accumulation of a lot of knowledge about a specific person can make you feel a little awkward. But the more you know that you didn’t know before just means that you are putting pieces together that others may have missed. On a down day at an old job, I (jokingly) committed to uncovering “Deep Throat” after reading rumors that the then-unnamed informant was in his final days. After an entire day of combing through information and feeling increasingly icky as I searched, I stood up and declared to the room that W. Mark Felt was my best guess. And I was right. I have witnesses..

Use multiple sources that appear to offer the same information. I know, I know, “use multiple sources” is Research 101. But don’t disregard sources that seem to relay the same information as your first. Sometimes articles that are 95% the same hold the crucial difference that you are looking for. For example, when I was at TheLate Show, I was asked to construct a complete timeline of the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight for an appearance by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his flight crew. At that point, none existed. So after reading what felt like 50 versions of the same article, I was able to extract a small line from each that helped me create a complete list of events. Tedious, to be sure, but it’s effective..

Need someone’s email address? You can probably guess it. Hunting down e-mail addresses isn’t as hard as it may sound — they are usually pretty predictable. First, make sure you have the proper spelling of the person’s first and last name. Second, find the organization’s URL, then do a simple search of “@________.” Your search results will give you a sense of the organization’s e-mail structure: the options are usually first name, first initial/last name, and then the ever-popular first name dot last name. Would it be danielle@ted.com, d.thomson@ted.com, or danielle.thomson@ted.com? Chances are, it’ll be obvious after just a little bit of searching. Try sending a message — if it bounces back, guess again. If it doesn’t, the person you want will likely be reading it.

Have any research tips that you love? Share them in the comments.

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Language historian Anne Curzan speaks out on the spelling out of “slash” as a word instead of using “/” to denote dual concepts. She notes that word is evolving to have a definition of its own—an unusual distinction for something that started as punctuation. (Watch Anne’s talk, “What makes a word ‘real?’”)

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke, one of the most disturbing parts of the experience was the absence of the voices usually running through her head—her inner monologue simply stopped. Taylor explains why this felt so strange in an episode of Radiolab about words, which was rerun this week on NPR. (Watch Jill’s classic talk, “My stroke of insight.”)

Susie Ibarra, a TED Fellow, has released a new album called Drum Codes. A collaboration with fellow electronic percussionist Roberto Rodriguez, the album explores the “talking gongs” of the Philippines, and the language they create when played. (Read more about Susie’s work.)

Fargo: the fiction. Billy Bob Thornton stars in the FX television show Fargo, which is based on the Coen Brothers movie. Both give the absolute wrong impression of my city. Photo: FX/Matthias Clamer

By Greg Tehven

Fargo, North Dakota, has a skewed reputation. This city, which happens to be my hometown, rocketed to infamy thanks to the 1996 dark comedy by the Coen Brothers about a down-on-his-luck car salesman (William H. Macy) who plans to have his wife kidnapped, and the sheriff (Frances McDormand) who investigates what happens when the plan goes terribly awry. Fargo is a great film—I mean, it won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay—but it also planted some very off ideas about the city I call home. And just as the jokes were finally dissipating, FX rolled out a new, addictive TV show also called Fargo that dredged up the stereotypes anew.

I grew up on a family farm outside Fargo. In fact, my great-great-grandfather was one of the pioneers who first settled this area. And as the organizer of TEDxFargo, it feels like my duty to set the record straight. Below, some common misconceptions about Fargo, corrected.

You might think … people in Fargo talk funny.Yup, we might say “geez” on occasion. But most of us don’t talk funny, and we definitely don’t all sound the same. In fact, we have a surprisingly large international community. Our city is filled with innovators, artists, researchers, entrepreneurs and other professionals, many of whom have moved here from all over the world and have discovered that Fargo is a welcoming community to new Americans..

You might think … Fargo is small and in the middle of nowhere.Fun fact: Of the six towns named Fargo in the United States, the one in North Dakota has the largest population, with 113,658 residents. And we prefer to say we are located in the middle of a rich frontier, surrounded by beautiful natural landscapes and farms. Which means that Fargo offers what might be the greatest sunset in the world. Almost every night..

You might think … Fargo is cold all the time.I can’t lie—we get a lot of snow in Fargo, about 52 inches per winter. But it makes the other seasons all the sweeter, no? Fall is a gaggle of colors, spring is full of flowers, and the summer is glorious, mild and action-packed. The TEDxFargo community is hugely active in the warm months, with outdoor lunches and after-event celebrations in gardens and on rooftops. Our early summer mornings allow us to feature TEDx Adventures—this year, we’ll hold a coffee roasting exhibition, do yoga on a rooftop, and play childhood games in one of Fargo’s many parks.

You might think … Fargo is for old-timers.The characters in Fargo aren’t exactly young and spry—they’re middle-aged and dealing with a lack of opportunities. But I’d like to point out that Fargo is now one of the youngest cities in the United States. In fact, the average age here is 30.2 years old. We are home to several universities, and Concordia Language Villages is one of the top places for people in the world to learn a new language. As far as new opportunities, we have a full calendar of startup events, an organization dedicated to promoting startups, a recently launched no-cost co-living incubator, and one of the best 1 Million Cups organizations in the country. So many people in Fargo are running their own companies or setting up their own creative studios. People are choosing Fargo as a place to launch their careers. Fun fact: nine new people move to Fargo every day..

You might think … Fargo is a nowhere place where no one would want to live.When I was younger, I believed the negative mythology about this place, so I went off to a big college, co-founded a nonprofit (Students Today Leaders Forever), and then traveled widely to see the great cities of the world. I spent time in Hanoi and Bangkok, and walked across Spain. And after that, I wanted to come back to Fargo. I’ve committed my life’s work to making this the greatest city in the world. I’ve turned down opportunities elsewhere to raise the profile of a creative community filled with some of the kindest people in the world.

TEDxFargo: On Purpose is just around the corner—it will take place on Thursday, July 24, at the historic Fargo Theatre. Our first event started in 2012 with four speakers and 100 people in the audience; this event will feature 22 speakers with an audience of more than 800, and TEDxYouth@Fargo the next day. This kind of growth couldn’t happen without a dedicated team of volunteers. This year, in addition to the speaker program, we’ll experiment with the aroma in the lobby and have puppies to hang out with during the breaks. Overall, we push ourselves to create a memorable experience where attendees are able to see things with new eyes and hear things with new ears. So we especially appreciate your thinking differently about our city.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/5-common-misconceptions-about-fargo-north-dakota/feed/15Fargo-fictionalized-in-the-Billy-Bob-Thornton-showtedblogguestFargo: the fiction. Billy Bob Thornton stars in the FX television show Fargo. This show is based on the Coen Brothers movie, and gives the absolute wrong impression of my city. Photo: FXFargo: the reality. TEDxFargo truly represents this city—full of big ideas and fascinating people. Photo: TEDxFargoLeave work for a year to go live on a remote island? How a TED Talk inspired me to take a mid-career sabbaticalhttp://blog.ted.com/how-a-ted-talk-inspired-me-to-take-a-mid-career-sabbatical/
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Winston Chen left his job at a software company in Boston and moved his family to the island of Rødøy, population 108, for a year. Here, Chen’s son walks across a deserted beach on a stormy day. Photo: Winston Chen

By Winston Chen

Odysseus…Gauguin…Robinson Crusoe…and me?

Many people dream of the ultimate escape: throwing all the baggage of civilization away and taking off to live on a remote island. But few people—particularly professional couples with young kids—actually go through with it. And yet, that’s just what my family did: we left Boston, and my reliable job at a software company, to go live on a tiny island north of the Arctic Circle for a year, unsure of what exactly we’d do there or what we would face upon our return.

Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off
The seed of this idea was planted three years before, when a friend made me watch a TED Talk by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. He presented a tantalizing idea: “We spend about 25 years of our lives learning. Then there is about 40 years reserved for working. And then, tucked at the end of it, are about 15 years of retirement. I thought it might be helpful to cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse in between those working years.”

It struck a deep chord with me. I was an executive at a small software company, a typical management job where I spent the bulk of my working day in PowerPoint. I’d been working for about 10 years, and felt like I was just going through the motions. We live in a society that celebrates strong work ethics and delayed gratification—all good things, but we’ve taken this cultural mindset to the extreme. We deny ourselves the time to do anything significant outside of work until we’re physically and mentally well past our prime.

Ever since watching that talk, my wife and I wanted to take time off to go live in a faraway place. It took us three years to work up the nerve to actually do it. We finally decided to seize the moment when our children were old enough to remember the adventure, but not so old that they’d started elementary school. My wife, a teacher from Norway, was itching to get to back into the classroom and found a teaching job at a small island in Arctic Norway called Rødøy. Our launch sequence began.

We rented out our house, furniture and car, and packed four big duffle bags. With loads of anxiety and fear, we took off for an island that we had never set foot on with a population of just 108 people, determined to live on my wife’s teacher salary for a year.

While Stefan Sagmeister’s goal for his year off was to rejuvenate his creativity, mine was more loosely planned. I wanted to give myself a year without any concrete goals. I spent a lot of one-on-one time with our children with no objectives other than to be together—very different from before when I only had time to manage the children through daily routines. We communicated in a more relaxed and empathetic way, and I got to know both children in profound ways.

The Botnen-Chen family. From left: Marcus, Kristin, Winston and Nora, with the beautiful scenery of Rødøy in the background. Photo: Winston Chen

I hiked and fished. After dropping the kids off at the island school, I would carry on with my backpack and fishing rod and go off. I took photography more seriously, because I could afford the time to think about the picture rather than rushing just to capture something. I learned to play the ukulele and started to paint in oil after a long hiatus.

Three months into my island year, I rediscovered an old passion: programming. Just for fun, I started to develop a simple app that would read web articles or PDF files out loud using synthesized speech. I called it Voice Dream Reader. It quickly became a full-blown obsession as I realized that the app had the potential to transform the lives of students and adults with difficulties reading. Fun, passion, excitement—suddenly I knew the “next thing.” I worked on developing it slowly but surely, and kept on with the other activities I was enjoying so much on the island too.

In the summer, with the kids and my wife out of school, we let the weather steer our days. Warm days meant taking our skiff to a beach on any of hundreds of nearby islands; cooler days were for hiking; rainy days were reserved for crafts projects and board games. Sometimes we stayed up hiking till midnight, taking in spectacular hours-long sunsets.

I think that people hesitate to make bold moves like the one my family did not because it’s hard to leave: leaving is actually the easy part. I think it’s the fear of what happens after re-entry that keeps even the most adventurous families from straying far from home. When we headed home after a year, we had no jobs and no medical insurance waiting for us. And we were immediately up against mortgage and car payments, plus all the costs of living in an expensive city.

But strangely, we felt truly at ease on our first evening back in the States as we sat on an outdoor patio with good friends talking about our respective summers. For our friends, summer had been a juggling feat—the careful balancing of their two demanding full-time jobs with their children’s jumbled activity schedules. The logistics of this had been worked out with two other sets of parents months in advance, in a strategy session that required laptops, a projector and plenty of wine. In contrast, our summer had entailed waking up in the late morning every day and making a big breakfast, then exploring an unthinkably beautiful island.

A stunning sunset over Rødøy. Photo: Winston Chen

Throughout that first evening of our return, I could feel palpable stress coming from our friends, a successful couple with substantial means. But my family, even with no income, felt at peace. That was when it dawned on me: our island year wasn’t just a memorable adventure. It had made us different people.

After we returned, I trudged on with the Voice Dream Reader app, even though it was not selling much. Focusing on this, rather than getting a traditional job, was a far bigger risk than any I had taken before. But my wife and I often said, “What’s the worst that can happen? We go back and live on the island?” We were clothed with the armor of confidence forged from the newfound knowledge that our family could be very happy living on very little.

I continued to improve the app until it started to generate enough income to sustain us. It wasn’t instantaneous, but today, nearly two years later, Voice Dream Reader is a bigger success than I could have ever imagined. It’s been a Top 10 selling education app in 86 countries. But more importantly, my work is immensely satisfying. With Voice Dream Reader, students who struggled with visual reading are able to listen and learn like everyone else. Adults who had trouble reading all their lives—not knowing that they have dyslexia—are now devouring books. It’s making a difference in people’s everyday lives.

So many people who hear my story tell me how much they yearn for a similar experience: to take a big chunk of time off to pursue their heart’s desire. To them I say: have no fear. Most people are far more resilient to lifestyle changes than they think. And careers, which are rarely linear, can be just as resilient too.

The upsides of taking a mid-career year of retirement are potentially life changing. By giving yourself time off and away, you’re creating a climate teeming with possibilities. Perhaps you’ll find passion in a new kind of work like I did. For sure, you’ll come back with new confidence and fresh perspectives to fuel your career, plus stories and memories to enrich you and your family for life. And you don’t have waited till you’re 65.

The Botnen-Chen family was used to Boston. So this small village near the Arctic Circle offered big adventure. Photo: Winston Chen

Has a TED Talk inspired you to make a major life decision? Email kate@ted.com and tell her your story. You may someday see it here on the TED Blog.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/how-a-ted-talk-inspired-me-to-take-a-mid-career-sabbatical/feed/31Winston Chen 1tedblogguestWinston Chen's son, then TK-years-old, walks across a beach on a stormy day. Photo: Winston ChenThe Botnen-Chen family. From left: Marcus, Kristin, Winston and Nora, with the beautiful scenery of Rødøy in the background. Photo: Winston ChenA stunning sunset over Rødøy. Photo: Winston ChenA view of the village below.The best way to start your job at TEDx? Meet 300 TEDx organizers … all at oncehttp://blog.ted.com/the-best-way-to-start-your-job-at-tedx-meet-300-tedx-organizers-all-at-once/
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Me with a group of organizers, discussing the TEDx program over brunch. Photo: Richard Hsu

By Jay Herratti

There are many great ways to start a new job. But I have experienced none quite as good as meeting hundreds of people—from all corners of the globe—who are extremely passionate about improving their communities through big ideas.

When I accepted my new role as director of the TEDx program, I knew I would meet a lot of TEDx organizers. But little did I know that, just a few weeks into my new position, I’d be traveling 3,968 miles away from the TED office in New York to meet with 300 of them at the TEDx Workshop at the TEDSalon Berlin. I had even less idea how deeply I’d be moved by this global community.

At the TEDx Workshop, I came face-to-face with organizers of all ages, careers and interests, all who have one thing in common — a relentless dedication to spreading new ideas. From a mother organizing a TEDxWomen event while balancing a busy life raising children and working a full-time job, to a 16-year-old student inspired to change her hometown by hosting a TEDxYouth event, the workshop introduced me to the incredible diversity of the TEDx community. The group truly came alive in the conversations, debates, discussions and adventures shared in Berlin.

Each person I met had an entirely different story — a unique, compelling desire to organize their event — which each unveiled as they spoke about what attracted them to the program and how they are approaching it in their part of the world. These stories showed how TEDx has grown, how it continues to grow, and how it shapes the people and places that make it possible. With an average eight events occurring each day, across 167 countries, there is so much to learn from this global community.

I left Berlin inspired by these 300 TEDx organizers — by their stories, their creativity and their zeal for seeing the world transformed by ideas. It left me energized, excited, and ready to work with the TEDx team to do all that we can to support them.

Two organizers take a moment at a barbecue held by TEDxBerlin. Photo: Richard Hsu

Jay Herratti is the new executive director of TEDx. He lives in New York and has two dogs that don’t like wearing snow boots.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/the-best-way-to-start-your-job-at-tedx-meet-300-tedx-organizers-all-at-once/feed/4TEDx Workshop, Berlin, Germany, 6/23/14.tedblogguestMe with a group of organizers, discussing the TEDx program over brunch. Photo: Two organizers take a moment at a barbecue held by TEDxBerlin. Photo: Richard HsuTEDx organizers explore Berlin on their own—and take a boat trip. Photo: Richard HsuParvinder Sondhi of TEDxWroclawWomen and Karolina Skalska of TEDxYouth@Wroclaw outside the TEDSalon. Photo: Richard HsuTEDx organizers pose for a picture outside the workshop. Photo: Richard HsuWhy TED is “cleaning” every single one of our video files — all 1,700 of themhttp://blog.ted.com/why-ted-is-cleaning-every-single-one-of-our-video-files-all-1700-of-them/
http://blog.ted.com/why-ted-is-cleaning-every-single-one-of-our-video-files-all-1700-of-them/#commentsMon, 16 Jun 2014 20:58:48 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90610[…]]]>

By Gwen Schroeder

When you watch a TED Talk, you see a speaker on a stage sharing a big idea. But for us in TED’s post-production department, we see each talk as the final product of a complex recipe. The speaker and their words are the most important ingredient, of course. But there are other, less-obvious ingredients in the video too — like the TED intro, the thank-you to our sponsor, the closing outro video message, as well as the lines of text overlaying the video itself, called “lower thirds,” that contain the speaker’s name, the date and the location where the talk was given.

Recently, though, we realized that we baked in a few too many ingredients. We need a simpler video file with fewer extras tacked on. Which meant we need to remake our library of 1,700+ talk videos without those extras — starting from scratch with the edited video and re-exporting it with a simpler list of ingredients.

When we started posting TED Talks in 2006, we had one sponsor, spoke in one language, and existed in only a few places: the TED.com website, the iTunes store, and Google Video. Now we have many sponsors, speak 105 languages, and share talks on YouTube, Netflix, and more than 50 video-sharing platforms around the world. Stripping down our talk files will help future-proof our entire library so we can keep serving many languages, sites and video distribution platforms.

One of the many details you might not have noticed are baked into each TED Talk—the date and location where the talk was given.

Distribution is a big deal for us — collectively, our distribution partners have delivered one billion video views as of March 2014. Some of these new partners require Korean subtitles, or ask us to translate on-screen text into a handful of different languages. Others ask that we remove the “For more talks, visit TED.com” text towards the end of our talks, because their policy doesn’t allow them to show other URLs. Many of our partners need other special ingredients for their particular audience.

In rarer cases, we need to make changes to our talk files themselves. A speaker’s name might have changed. Or we might realize that we mislabeled a talk’s date or event, and we want to correct it. And what if we want to change our water-drop intro video to something else, later on down the line?

Currently, we’re stuck with what we’ve got. And it’s meant that we’ve had to create little hacks to give some of our distribution partners their special requests. It’s fine to do this for a few people or a few partners, but as we grow, that quick hack will become time-consuming.

Some of our global partners have specific needs for talks—like subtitles in the language their audience speaks.

So instead we’re going back to the original video project file for each and every of our 1,700+ talks and, essentially, un-baking them. We’re taking out the extras — the speaker’s name, location of the event, and any other on-screen text, as well as the standard TED intro and outro — so we are left with just the main ingredient, the talk itself. At the same time, we’re creating a custom system that will allow us to add all the extra elements separately — in a way that lays them on top of the bare-bones video, dynamically. It will all be easily editable.

This new video is called the “clean” talk; thus, this project has been dubbed Clean Re-Exports, or, around the office, Project Cleans. It is easily the largest project that I’ve ever managed in my career. In order to create cleans, we have to track down over 10,000 individual media files. Have you ever stressed over losing a single file on your computer? Imagine having to track down thousands, going back 5 to 7 years. There are inevitable holes in our electronic archive, so that means physically going down to our storage unit, pulling tapes and re-digitizing hours of media. Once we track down the media, I assign the un-baking work to 10 different freelance editors.

We started in January, and by now we’ve completed about 30% of the archive. More than 800 talks of our videos are somewhere in the process pipeline of getting “cleaned.” Meanwhile, we’re giving the same treatment to each new talk we post from Monday through Friday so we don’t have to go back to it later.

Another little element you might not notice are a part of each and every talk.

At some point along the pipeline, more than one third of TED’s entire staff will have a hand in this clean re-export project. This includes our 22-member production team, who are all deeply involved in the project; our distribution team, who understand the needs of each of our individual partners; our partnerships team, who work with sponsor on new ads; our editorial team, who check the copy for mistakes; and our interns, who double-check it all.

It’s tedious at times, and it can be easy to lose sight of the goal. But the other day we tested the back-end system built in-house by our engineering team to stitch all the pieces together — clean video + titles + intro/outro video + subtitles — and were so excited to see it produce the finished video quickly and cleanly. You couldn’t tell the difference against what’s currently on the site.

It’s an uphill battle, yes, but this work is vital for our mission of sharing ideas, allowing us to reach more and more people than ever before.

*Gwen is our Post Production Manager. When she’s not at work, she can be found running marathons with a camera strapped on her head.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/why-ted-is-cleaning-every-single-one-of-our-video-files-all-1700-of-them/feed/7CleanstedblogguestCleansOne of the many details you might not noticed are baked into each talk—the date and location where the talk was given. These are the little things we wanted to remove and add separately.Some of our global partners have specific needs for talks—like subtitles in the language their audience speaks.Another little element you might not notice are a part of each and every talk.A non-profit gets better at doing good, with inspiration from a TED Talkhttp://blog.ted.com/a-non-profit-gets-better-at-doing-good-with-inspiration-from-dan-pallottas-ted-talk/
http://blog.ted.com/a-non-profit-gets-better-at-doing-good-with-inspiration-from-dan-pallottas-ted-talk/#commentsTue, 03 Jun 2014 20:54:48 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90428[…]]]>

Flying Kites is a non-profit that seeks to raise the standards of care for orphans in Kenya. Here, board members snap a photo with the residents of the Children’s Home. Photo: Leila de Bruyne

By Leila de Bruyne

This spring, I turned 30. And it’s true what they say: the younger you are, the more you think you know. I spent my 20s building Flying Kites, a small non-profit serving orphaned children and vulnerable families in Kenya. It took lots of energy and lots of traveling, and was a ton of fun. Cue a cliche ‘start-up’ montage where my two co-founders and I, not to mention countless other characters, worked seven days a week and took huge risks that sometimes paid off and other times sent us laughing/crying under our desks.

In total, we raised more than $2.5 million dollars to invest in some of the poorest of poor families in Kenya. And please don’t tell our donors this: but it’s all been largely by the seat of our pants. Straight out of college, none of us had a background in the non-profit, or even the for-profit, industry. After a while, it got hard to keep that “low salary, long hours” buzz alive. As people entered their late-twenties, the office got quieter.

It’s not something you really hear about, the slow burnout that happens in the charity space. Your friends are climbing corporate ladders, with rungs of structure and professional development and salaries and bonuses. Meanwhile, you are running hard, just trying to stay on the treadmill, in hopes of doing good. The families and kids who are counting on you keep you up at night, but as time goes on, less and less makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning. Nothing can prepare you for the first time your eyes start to glaze over when someone says, “Wow that must be so rewarding. Tell me about it!” About what? The project, or the deep, deep feelings of loneliness and isolation that come from building a non-profit at 23?

Don’t get me wrong; we’ve had great support and generous mentors. In fact, I confided in one of them—Bostonian Paul English, a TED attendee (and the cofounder of Kayak.com) who is renowned for building teams and bringing out the best in businesses—that I lacked strategy and craved guidance on a daily basis. I complained to him about feeling generally overwhelmed. He quipped, “Do what I do: hire someone smarter than you.”

Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong
Around the same time, I stumbled upon Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk, “The way we think about charity is dead wrong.” I had met Dan in his Cambridge office when Flying Kites was first starting out, and I had given out numerous copies of his book Uncharitable to friends and donors over the years. While I was always inspired by his message about investing in overhead, in order to do better work in the long-term, I felt unable to really deliver the argument in moments when it mattered. I would be in a presentation and someone would say, “What percentage of a dollar goes to directly to the children?” And I would freeze.

Dan’s TED talk was a game-changer for my co-founders and I. All of a sudden, we were able to present the logic behind our investment choices in a compelling, thoughtful way. In his way. In fact, we used his talk video so much that we ended up taking the sentences that meant the most to us and overlaying them with our mission in a two-minute video. (Yeah, not sure this is legal.)

Many people in the non-profit world have said that Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk changed how they thought about their organization. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

A few months ago, inspired by our conversation and by Dan’s talk, Paul English donated a substantial amount of money to Flying Kites to fund the salary of an executive director. In March, I hired my own boss, a formidable leader who has spent over 30 years in both the corporate and not-for-profit world. On her first day, I found myself confiding in her things I had been afraid to say out-loud: “We never have more than three months’ reserve in the bank. We need a plan and we don’t have one.”

Our first few months working together have been full of hope for me. I’ve had the pleasure of looking to our new CEO to formalize our operations and build structure around our vision. Razor’s Edge, Quickbooks, HR policies, board development—she’s swiftly charting the path that I couldn’t find because I had been so lost in the trenches.

It would seem my generation has all the answers. The news is full of stories of extraordinary CEOs in their 20s, taking over the world. Before, I would have felt embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t sure how to best run the organization I had started, especially in our culture of successful young trailblazers who wear sweatshirts to work. But after Dan’s talk and Paul’s generous gift, I realized that the organization had simply reached a point where its needs exceeded my skill set. Hiring my own boss was one of the greatest things I’ve done for Flying Kites.

Recently, I was telling Serah, one of the orphaned children who lives at our home in Kenya, about hiring our new executive director and how my role has changed.

“It’s because you needed more help?” she asked.

“Yes” I explained, “more help, but also a teacher of sorts, to guide us to make the best choices.”

She smiled and tilted her head, “Like having a grown-up around?”

Yes. Exactly like having a grown-up around.

I guess it takes a 30-year-old to know when to ask a grown-up for help. The ultimate dream is supposed to be working for yourself. That’s not my dream anymore. If my only legacy is that I am good at asking for help, I’m okay with that too. I love my job again and I finally jump out of bed in the morning again. I feel like I owe it to the children for whom we are responsible to put my CEO-ego aside and let someone wiser steer this heavy and evolving ship.

Leila de Bruyne blows out the candles on her birthday cupcake, held by Flying Kites chairwoman Meredith Starr. With her birthday came a big realization about her work. Photo: Instagram

]]>http://blog.ted.com/a-non-profit-gets-better-at-doing-good-with-inspiration-from-dan-pallottas-ted-talk/feed/4Flying-Kites-grouptedblogguestFlying-Kites-groupMany people in the non-profit world have said that Dan Pallotta's TED Talk changed how they thought about their organization. Photo: James Duncan DavidsonLeila de Bruyne blows at the candles on her birthday cupcake, held by Flying Kites chairwoman Meredith Starr. Photo: InstagramReflections on the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, from the lead exhibition designerhttp://blog.ted.com/reflections-on-the-opening-of-the-911-memorial-museum-from-the-lead-exhibition-designer/
http://blog.ted.com/reflections-on-the-opening-of-the-911-memorial-museum-from-the-lead-exhibition-designer/#commentsThu, 22 May 2014 18:58:39 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90250[…]]]>

A look at the Slurry Wall inside the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. Here, lead exhibition designer Tom Hennes reflects on it opening to the public. Photo: Jin Lee

If you watch TED Talks, you know Tom Hennes’ designs well. His firm, Thinc Design, created the stage for the TED conference in Monterey and Long Beach from 2003 through 2012. Thinc Design was also the lead exhibition designer for the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which opened to the public yesterday. The TED Blog asked Hennes to reflect on the opening:

At 9 o’clock yesterday morning, the doors of the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened for the first time to the general public, represented in the growing queue by a slightly wary group led by an intrepid woman in a pink t-shirt. I’ve become so accustomed to the sound of workers and machinery down there, 70 feet below the Memorial plaza, that the relative hush of people encountering the vast museum spaces for the first time caught me a bit off guard. People moved slowly, deliberately, taking it all in, reading—reading everything—looking, taking pictures, talking with each other in barely audible tones. They leaned over the edge of the entry ramp in front of the immense piece of impact steel—a mangled trio of steel columns from the façade of the North Tower just above the impact of Flight 11 from about the ninety-sixth floor—looking intently at the inward-bent claw at its lower terminus. They paused at the images of missing posters, quietly looking, before moving downward, along the Vesey Street Stair—that last stairway to safety for so many people on 9/11—toward the bedrock level that is the museum’s main floor. And there they wandered, looking around, still speaking quietly with each other, to the other parts of the museum; a regular, if halting, processional that dissolved into myriad paths according to the interest, inclination, and depth which each person in the museum sought—or could tolerate..

Our work on the museum over the past seven years has similarly threaded among the polarities and contradictions of this all too deeply-felt and widely-experienced event. The central design challenge is not, as it is in so many museums, to bring the material to life. Rather, the central design challenge is to maintain that aliveness while making it bearable to witness. This includes not only the material that pertains to the attacks themselves and the way people experienced them—as difficult as that is. It also pertains to responses people have had to the events that may differ, sometimes strongly, with those that others may have had. Along with a wide-ranging team—both inside the museum and among its consultants and many constituents—the design team has sought to create a museum that presents a wide range of perspectives on what happened, giving everyone—we hope—familiar points of reference that feel authentic to their own experience of 9/11. At the same time, in the same space, people may also encounter other kinds of experiences and responses that may at first seem alien to them. By maintaining the first-person voice throughout, and by continuously re-grounding the exhibits in lived experience, we have sought to create conditions where people feel comfortable moving out of their own experience to witness the events and others’ myriad responses to them with greater empathy and an increased sense of how they themselves relate to 9/11. By witnessing others, and being witnessed by others in the museum, we are all brought into closer contact with our own humanity.

Such depth of feeling and response to others are only possible in a space that feels safe. Safety arises out of a feeling of containment and protection, and out of the ability to control our own experience. This means giving people choices as to where to go and what to encounter, as well as a way of navigating the space that makes those choices clear. It also requires ready access to exits and relief spaces where people can sit and reflect, as well as staff ready to be of assistance when needed. But safety is not the only requirement. For people to be able to push beyond their own frames of reference also requires the presence of the other, contrasting perspectives that inhabit the spaces, and the awareness that a turn in one direction can lead into more challenging terrain than a turn in another. In this way, the museum becomes what the team has come to call ‘safe enough’—providing enough safety to allow the experience to enter us in the museum, but not so safe that we don’t stretch our own horizons and come to new insights about ourselves and others. Choice comes into play and the design becomes an essential aspect of the experience as a whole when it enables each of us to navigate a path that is ‘safe enough’ for us.

At nine o’clock yesterday morning, the first people who were not family members, survivors, rescuers, or recovery workers walked into the museum and through the cloud of voices in the introductory exhibit that tell stories of where they were on 9/11 and how they felt, their words projected as a map of the world onto screens. These first witnesses to the museum walked through, taking in the knowledge that they, too, were witnesses to 9/11. An hour later, the first of the day’s wanderers through the museum arrived at the recumbent piece of steel, located in the vast space called Foundation Hall—between the Last Column and the escalator that would carry them back to the surface—where they could use an electronic pen to write their thoughts and see them projected onto another map of words, now projected onto the base of the huge Slurry Wall that once formed the foundation of the World Trade Center and now forms the perimeter wall of the museum. Wherever they had been then, on that September 11 in 2001, they were here now, at this place, on May 21 in 2014, as part of a growing community of witness. Theirs was a journey that will be repeated millions of times over the coming years. I can only hope that the museum will bring the journeyers closer to their own experience and toward a sense of fulfillment in the journey, so that they feel more ready to engage with the complex world, with all its difficulties and opportunities alike, that awaits their return to the surface.

The illness hit me on a beautiful summer weekend. I woke up early and did an hour of exercise, feeling very excited to take my children to a local festival that evening. We all put on our summer kimonos, called yukata—my then 5-year-old son turned into a little samurai and my 2-year-old girl became a princess. It could have been one of those perfect days that you cherish for the rest of your life.

Earlier in the day, my 2-year-old daughter was playing in our living room and jumped on me. I caught her in an awkward position, and felt something wrong in my back—something heavy and a bit painful. At first, I thought I had hurt my back, but after we came back from the festival, something else seemed to be wrong. I broke into a sweat, had shortness of breath, felt fatigued, and my temperature kept going up. I thought I had caught a bad cold in addition to the back pain—I never put the two together as something more serious.

Like millions of other mothers, I tend to put myself last on the to-do list. I thought I just needed a good night’s rest and a Tylenol. My husband, Hideo, had a different idea. He was there for me when I battled CFS/FM (chronic fatigue syndrome/fibromyalgia) for seven years and had seen me very sick. He knew that something was really wrong this time, too. He insisted on taking me to a hospital. A hospital? I thought. No way! I didn’t want to wait on an uncomfortable hospital bench, trying to sooth my children for hours. Hideo had just started a new job, and I knew that he couldn’t afford to take a day off.

Despite my protests, he dragged me and the kids to the hospital the next morning. By the time I was officially hospitalized, I had passed out several times. I remember two hallucinations I had repeatedly. The first one was the image of parents smiling big with their running strollers—it made sense, as I had founded Baby Run, an exercise program for parents, in 2009. The second image was a TEDx speaker sparkling on the stage, leaving everyone in awe. I was viewing it as if from the backstage as a staff member—again accurate since I helped organize a TEDx event. I’m not sure if my hallucinations were a near-death experience or not, but I believe what you recall during the most difficult times tells you what kind of person you are.

At the TEDxKyoto speaker audition in 2013, I had stepped onto the stage myself and talked about my experience overcoming CFS/FM and starting Baby Run after my son was born. The talk was about how I stood up from a bed-bound situation. But doing this once was rough enough. “Oh, come on, not again!” I thought. “I want a happy ending! Why does my story of struggle have to have a sequel? Is this going to be like Die Hard 2? What if there’s a part 3 and 4?” I begged, “Oh, please, I am not that strong!”

The doctors explained: I had sepsis. It was caused by an infection that spread from my bladder to my kidneys, where my veins carried it to the rest of my body. I was unaware of the infection—the only discomfort initially had been the dull pain in my lower back. But it was serious—while I barely knew its name, sepsis has high death rates even in developed countries.

The real journey began, though, after I was released from the hospital. Unexplainable pain persisted for more than five months. Every single time I moved a little, the pain got worse. So, I had no choice—I stayed in the bed all day long. Again. Hideo was so supportive. He got up at 4 o’clock in the morning, cooked for the day, went to work until very late at night, came back home, cleaned up the mess and repeated the pattern again a few hours later.

I, on the other hand, cuddled up in bed all day long. For a busy mother, a few days off sounds like a dream—but being bed-bound long-term is a nightmare. I wished I could do something for my family. We visited several doctors but I always ended up with more fatigue and pain. Even a psychiatrist couldn’t help, explaining that the pain wasn’t rooted in my mind. We were lost. We needed a clear answer. My husband and I often encouraged each other, saying it had been only months—and we had gone through much worse for years. This pain was only in the lower right side of my back—with CFS/FM, I’d felt it throughout my entire body. This was a better situation, we kept saying to ourselves.

I spent most of the day reading and watching movies. I guess I was trying to learn from the great wisdom of the past as I went through these dark hours. Of course, I also watched a lot of TED and TEDx talks. These videos were just perfect while I was in pain.

Most of the videos I watched had Japanese subtitles, since that was easier for me to follow. But sometimes there were great talks and Japanese subtitles simply hadn’t been written yet. There are millions of people waiting for these kinds of stories, I thought. I got curious, wondering: who translates these talks?

After some online research, I discovered TED’s Open Translation Project, a global community working hard to bring talks beyond the English-speaking world. I applied to be a part of it on the spot. The very next day, I became part of an incredible team that I can only describe in two words: very Japanese. The translators I worked with are introverted, but deep thinkers. They didn’t make a fuss about the contributions they were making—and yet their work helped spread ideas to people all around Japan. I wished I had started OTP earlier.

The first talk I reviewed was “A child of the State” by Lemn Sissay. It really resonated with me. My mother left my family when I was 14 and, at the time, a lot of people insisted that my father put me and my brother into a government facility. Luckily, my father kept us. A teenager at the time, I felt insecure and was getting bad grades in school. In fact, I began to study English to set myself free from the stereotypes of what Japanese girls should be. As Lemn Sissay says in his talk, “It’s not that I’d had the rug pulled from beneath me as much as the entire floor had been taken away.” I know how that feels. If I could use my English skills to make this story heard in Japan, I couldn’t be happier. A translator is not allowed to change the story; a translator has to deliver it as-is. I was sure I could take on that task.

It was sometimes difficult to use a computer due to the pain. So I printed out the talk’s transcript and translated it the old-fashioned way, using paper and pencil. When the pain was too much and I couldn’t move, I would shout for my husband, “I just came up with a better translation. Would you write it down for me!?” Hideo was incredibly supportive of my joining OTP. He liked seeing me active and said that it helped motivate him to juggle multiple tasks. “You are the one,” he kept saying, “who spreads the ideas no matter where you are and how you feel.”

It took five months to recover from sepsis. Today, the pain is gone, and I am finally busy again. I spend most of my time with my children and have slowly resumed work with Baby Run. And then there are the endless house chores—which make me happy, at least most of the time. But even now, with much less free time, I am honored to continue to spread the ideas as a member of the OTP community.

Has a TED Talk helped you through a hard time? Write kate@ted.com and tell her your story.

Hideo and Ai Tokimatsu with their children, now. Photo: Ai Tokimatsu

]]>http://blog.ted.com/how-translating-ted-talks-helped-me-recover/feed/15Ai--Tokimatsu-in-hospitaltedblogguestAi Tokimatsu watches a TED Talk on her phone in the hospital, with her two children. Photo: Courtesy Ai TokimatsuHideo and Ai Tokimatsu with their children, now. Photo: Ai TokimatsuTen years later: Dan Gilbert on life after “The surprising science of happiness”http://blog.ted.com/ten-years-later-dan-gilbert-on-life-after-the-surprising-science-of-happiness/
http://blog.ted.com/ten-years-later-dan-gilbert-on-life-after-the-surprising-science-of-happiness/#commentsFri, 11 Apr 2014 19:06:07 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=89237[…]]]>Dan Gilbert gave his first TED Talk in February 2004; The surprising science of happiness was one of the first we ever published, in September 2006. Here, the Harvard psychologist reminisces about the impact of TED, shares some suggestions of useful further reading — and owns up to some mistakes.

by Dan Gilbert

When I gave this talk in 2004, the idea that videos might someday be “posted on the internet” seemed rather remote. There was no Netflix or YouTube, and indeed, it would be two years before the first TED Talk was put online. So I thought I was speaking to a small group of people who’d come to a relatively unknown conference in Monterey, California, and had I realized that ten years later more than 8 million people would have heard what I said that day, I would have (a) rehearsed and (b) dressed better.

That’s a lie. I never dress better. But I would have rehearsed. Back then, TED talks were considerably less important events and therefore a lot more improvisational, so I just grabbed some PowerPoint slides from previous lectures, rearranged them on the airplane to California, and then took the stage and winged it. I had no idea that on that day I was delivering the most important lecture of my life.

Mea Maxima Culpa

When you wing it, you make mistakes; and when millions of people watch you wing it, several hundred thousand of them will notice. There are at least three mistakes in this talk, and I know it because I’ve been receiving (and sheepishly replying to) emails about them for nearly ten years. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to correct them.

Mistake 1. Lottery Winners & Paraplegics: The first mistake occurred when I misstated the facts about the 1978 study by Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman on lottery winners and paraplegics.

At 2:54 I said, “… a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.” In fact, the two groups were not equally happy: Although the lottery winners (M=4.00) were no happier than controls (M=3.82), both lottery winner and controls were slightly happier than paraplegics (M=2.96).

So why has this study become the poster child for the concept of hedonic adaptation? First, most of us would expect lottery winners to be much happier than controls, and they weren’t. Second, most of us would expect paraplegics to be wildly less happy than either controls or lottery winners, and in fact they were only slightly less happy (though it is admittedly difficult to interpret numerical differences on rating scales like the ones used in this study). As the authors of the paper noted, “In general, lottery winners rated winning the lottery as a highly positive event, and paraplegics rated their accident as a highly negative event, though neither outcome was rated as extremely as might have been expected.” Almost 40 years later, I suspect that most psychologists would agree that this study produced rather weak and inconclusive findings, but that the point it made about the unanticipated power of hedonic adaptation has now been confirmed by many more powerful and methodologically superior studies. You can read the original study here.

Mistake 2. The Case of Moreese Bickham: The second mistake occurred when I told the story of Moreese Bickham. At 6:18 I said, “He spent 37 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for a crime he didn’t commit. He was ultimately exonerated, at the age of 78, through DNA evidence.” First, whether Mr. Bickham did or did not commit the crime is debatable. His attorney tells me that he believes Mr. Bickham was innocent, the state evidently believed otherwise, and I am no judge. Second, Mr. Bickham was not exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence, but rather, was released for good behavior after serving half his sentence.

How I managed to mangle these facts is something I still scratch my head about. Bad notes? Bad sources? Demonic possession? Sorry, I just don’t remember. But while I got these ancillary facts wrong, I got the key facts right: Mr. Bickham did spend 37 years in prison, he did utter those words upon his release, and he was (and apparently still is) much happier than most of us would expect ourselves to be in such circumstances. You can read about him here.

Mistake 3. The Irreversible Condition: The third mistake was a slip of the tongue that led me to say precisely the opposite of what I meant. At 18:02 I said, “… because the irreversible condition is not conducive to the synthesis of happiness.” Of course I meant to say reversible, not irreversible, and the transcript of the talk contains the correct word. I hope this slip didn’t stop anyone from getting married.

Digging Deeper

I mentioned two of my own studies in my talk, and people often write to ask where they can read about them. The study of the amnesiacs who were shown the Monet prints was done in collaboration with Matt Lieberman, Kevin Oschner, and Dan Schacter, was published in Psychological Science, and can be found here. The study of Harvard students who took a photography course was done in collaboration with Jane Ebert, was published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and can be found here. Pretty much everything else I’ve ever thought, said, written, felt, done, wondered, cooked, smoked or eaten can be found here.

Coda

Giving this talk taught me something I hadn’t known: normal people are interested in the same things I am! Until that day, I’d always thought that psychologists did experiments for each other and occasionally subjected undergraduates to them in class. What I discovered at TED in 2004 was that I could tell a story about human psychology to regular folks and some of them would actually want to hear it. Who knew? I’d been a professor for 20 years, but that was the first time it had ever occurred to me that a classroom can be roughly the size of the world.

I left TED determined to devote a portion of my professional life to telling people about exciting discoveries in the behavioral sciences. So I started writing essays for the New York Times, I wrote a popular book called Stumbling on Happiness, I made a PBS television series called This Emotional Life, and I even appeared in a Super Bowl commercial to try to remind people to plan for their futures. I don’t know what I’ll do next –another book, a feature film, a rock opera? Whatever it is, you can almost certainly blame it on TED.

How will our minds be blown in the next 30 years? Well, that’s quite a long time, given the acceleration in history. Still, I’ll be brave and make six hypotheses.

1. Machine Intelligence

I think that just as the Internet has been such a great driver of change across so many spheres over the past 20 years, we will see machine intelligence in the same role over the coming decades.

Today, we are as an intelligent species essentially singular. There are of course some other brainy species, like chimpanzees, dolphins, crows and octopuses, but if anything they only emphasize our unique position on Earth — as animals richly gifted with self-awareness, language, abstract thought, art, mathematical capability, science, technology and so on. Many of us have staked our entire self-concept on the idea that to be human is to have a mind, and that minds are the unique province of humans. For those of us who are not religious, this could be interpreted as the last bastion of dualism. Our economic, legal and ethical systems are also implicitly built around this idea.

Now, we’re well along the road to really understanding the fundamental principles of how a mind can be built, and Moore’s Law will put brain-scale computing within reach this decade. (We need to put some asterisks next to Moore’s Law, since we are already running up against certain limits in computational scale using our present-day approaches, but I’ll stand behind the broader statement.) When we reach this point, we will find ourselves no longer alone. It’s difficult to overstate the importance that moment will have in our future history.

It may well result in further nonlinearity in the “rate” of history too, since minds and what we’ve dreamt up with them have been the engine behind history and its acceleration.

2. Gender Selection

For many thousands of years we’ve lived in a male-dominated society. I don’t think that we’re shifting toward “female dominance” so much as I think that the whole idea of dominance is a male paradigm, and that it is this paradigm that is being selected against — by increasing population density in the urban cores, increasing education, larger working groups, increasing collaboration, rising technological leverage, global trade and so on. It may be difficult to imagine this now, when the vast majority of the world’s capital is still in the hands of men and many of the STEM fields (which are also among the highest-paid) are still overwhelmingly male, but I think that men — and especially “manly men” exhibiting many of the classical correlates of high testosterone — will be at a distinct disadvantage in 30 years time. This represents a profound upset of the patriarchal system that has defined virtually all of recorded history, so … it’ll be a big deal.

3. Post-subsistence Economics

As machine intelligence, robotics, and technological leverage in general increasingly decouple productivity from labor, we will continue to see unemployment rise even in otherwise healthy economies. The end state is one in which most forms of human labor are simply not required. In 30 years, if not sooner, we will be facing this unprecedented situation — and whether it’s heaven or hell depends on whether we’re able to let go of capitalism, economic Darwinism and the Calvinist ethics that implicitly underlie these systems. Without a change, of course, we will see mass unemployment drive a radical acceleration of the already dramatic imbalance between the very wealthy few and everyone else, leading to ugly conditions in the cities and ultimately violent uprising.

On the other hand, if we are able to set aside our Calvinism, we will realize that given the technological efficiencies we have achieved, everyone can live well, with or without a job. Capitalism, entrepreneurship and other systems of differential wealth creation could still function on top of this horizontal base; but everyone must be fed and housed decently, have access to free health care and education, and be able to live a good life. I assume the nation-state will still be a relevant legal and economic construct in 30 years (though I’m not sure, as corporations or possibly other structures will complicate the picture); my guess is that we will see both paths taken in different parts of the world, leading to misery and war in some, where either the benefits of accelerating technology are slow to penetrate or Darwinian economics are left unchecked.

4. Self-modification

We’re rapidly figuring out not only how the brain is engineered, but also the body. Of course this implies greater mastery over mechanisms of disease, but more broadly, as biology becomes first understood and then engineered, Nature becomes open to profound and rapid modification. I don’t doubt that we will be able to alter aging mechanisms, “fix” various bugs in human “design”, make novel organisms and ultimately modify our own natures. As we reach the end of the 30 year period it’s hard for me to imagine that people won’t begin to explore these capabilities, which seems likely to lead to accelerated speciation. Machine intelligence and bioengineering will both demand that we rethink our legal and ethical foundations in a variety of ways.

5. Space

The world’s space programs have been essentially dormant for decades, as we’ve focused inward on developments like computers and the Internet, biology and neuroscience. But as our fundamental technical capabilities improve, barriers to space exploration do begin to come down; what was once a heroic effort requiring the full brunt of the resources of the richest countries on Earth will come within reach of companies and (initially, rich) individuals. We’ve seen only the first stirrings of this with undertakings like SpaceX and Moon Express.

At some point our grasp of materials science and nanofabrication will become sufficient to build a space elevator, at which point our world will expand a great deal as the energetic cost of escaping Earth’s gravity well goes to near zero, as many science fiction writers of the 20th century imagined. While I’m unsure of whether the space elevator will happen within the 30 year period, I’m confident we’ll see this within our lifetimes.

6. Sexual and lifestyle freedom

In 30 years, I think that not only will the more progressive places in the world have finished reconciling themselves to the wide spectrum of sexual orientation and expression, but also to a wide variety of life configurations beyond the nuclear family built around a single lifelong pair-bond. There are many forces contributing to this shift, and I suspect that an empirical case can be made for this in much the same way as for the gender ideas above. This is the least developed of my six ideas, but one that I think will have profound implications.

Bonus: Energy
One thing I’m leaving off the list above is the potential availability of very cheap, very abundant energy at some point in the future. Many aspects of our outlook are conditioned on the premise that energy is limited and expensive. As a thought experiment, one can ask, “what if energy in virtually any amount were free?” This could imply an end to drought anywhere via desalination of seawater; it could allow us to enact climate controlling interventions on a massive scale, engineer materials that are currently cost-prohibitive, or let us get into space easily even if we continue to do it the hard way.

(Although freely available energy could let us save great ecosystems currently under dire threat, without great care it could also lead to disaster through chemical, thermal, biological and noise pollution on an unprecedented scale.)

We know that in principle vast amounts of energy are available to us through nuclear processes, so in principle an innovation could come along at any time that lets us tap safely into this energy. That would change everything. However, there is no trend or indication that suggests a timeline for such a development — it could happen next week, or still be a pipe dream a century from now.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas works on machine learning at Google. Previously a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, he has worked on augmented reality, mapping, wearable computing and natural user interfaces. He was also the co-creator of Photosynth, software that assembles photos into 3D environments.

In the next 30 years, the full Star Trek story will actually come true.

Already, we’ve seen many of the show’s far-fetched ideas come to fruition. Everyone now carries a communicator, aka the smart phone. We have medical devices that test for diseases with light, not by drawing blood (like new tests for anemia by TED Fellow Myshkin Ingawale). Anyone who heard the order, “Set phasers to stun,” given by the Enterprise crew, will appreciate tasers delivered by drones, as recently happened at South by Southwest. The universal translator is real. Bionic eyes like those of Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge now allow blind people to see. Cisco regularly advertises “telepresence.” Even tribbles — those small furry soft creatures that could relate to your emotions — exist as Furbies.

That was some jamming technological progress.

But none of the vision of humanity’s future that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed has materialized yet. His idea was that each person was able to contribute, that their differences were put to use, and that purpose aligned them to do better, together.

That’s next.

Most of us long to make a dent in the universe, to leave a world that’s different and better from the one we were born into. Now, increasingly, we can. And this shows us something that will blow our mind in 30 years: There is a new way for you, for many of us, to make a real dent, to bring the unique thing only we have to offer to bear on a situation to improve it. We all have something to offer — and as the next decades go by, we’ll all figure out how to apply it in a meaningful way.

No longer will change be the domain of the sanctioned, the privileged, the educated and the influential. Where once we required the support and might of an organization to try to make change, we don’t need that any more. Now we can easily enlist others to create with us, and we can all harness the power of purpose. This power is already at work in the world, unleashing the power of many, not in a sentimental or moralistic sense but in the sense that most of us want to do things that matter. And this force will gain momentum and speed in the next 30 years.

That means the forces-to-be-reckoned-with of the next 30 years won’t be singular giants such as Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey or Nelson Mandela. They will be all of us. People like Shel Kimen, the former advertising exec who returned to Detroit to build a workspace and hotel out of used shipping containers. Or Ryan Andresen, a scout since he was six years old, who came out as gay in high school, and swayed the Boy Scouts to change its policy to include kids like him. His courage and honor created new policies that embody his virtues.

These individuals are battling for the things that matter to them, based on their truth. And then, through their ability to connect with others with similar purpose, they are working to reshape society.

Many economists and technologists believe we’re coming into the machine age, where humans will compete with technology for jobs and ability to create value. I think they are partially right. In Star Trek, machines enabled humans to be more social. See the world through this lens, and you realize all of this technology combined with human ingenuity can be brought together to drive towards something new — a world where all people count.

We’re not coming into a machine era; we’re coming into the social era. Right now, we are at a particular inflection point of history, where the power of purposeful networks is clearly becoming a new way to get things done. What will happen when most of us are able to make a meaningful difference? Let’s find out. As much as we like our smart phones, I bet we’ll like where this path of society takes even more.

Nilofer Merchant is a former tech executive who’s now a two-time book author. Follow her at her blog, Yes & Know, or on Twitter @nilofer.

]]>http://ideas.ted.com/how-star-trek-will-finally-come-true/feed/5NilofertedblogguestNiloferWhat it will mean to live on a legible planethttp://ideas.ted.com/what-it-will-mean-to-live-on-a-legible-planet/
http://ideas.ted.com/what-it-will-mean-to-live-on-a-legible-planet/#commentsMon, 24 Mar 2014 10:00:47 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=87094[…]]]>

by Andrew Blau, Deloitte

Technology advances over the last 30 years mean that we have crossed an invisible threshold: for the first time in human history, we now live on a legible planet. What will blow our minds in the next 30 years is what it will mean when almost anyone can read and understand the world and almost everything on it, in it, and above it — in real time, at will.

400 years ago, Galileo took a new technology, turned into the night sky, and saw something that until that moment had been impossible for humans to see. The implications were profound for science, for religion — and ultimately, for society. Because he hadn’t just seen some of Jupiter’s moons. Over a few weeks in early 1610, equipped with a telescope and a notebook, he had made the heavens more legible than they had ever been. And once you can see things you have never seen, you can understand things no one has ever understood and do things that no one has ever done.

Today, we are in the infancy of a fundamentally new relationship with the planet and everything on it. Thanks to increasingly ubiquitous and cheap networks, sensors, satellites, cell phones, cameras, RFID tags, databases, digital storage and computing power, we can now read and understand the world around us with ever better clarity, often in real time. We can see the flow of people, resources, materials, goods, information, money, pollution, and more — from beneath the surface of the earth to the stratosphere, and from the microscopic to the global. And it’s not just a single Galileo with a rare technology who can do this; it’s going to be billions of us.

You probably already take for granted that you can sit in Vancouver and check the traffic at this very instant in San Francisco, Mumbai, Shanghai or Kiev. But make that industrial strength: companies can watch the global flow of goods being shipped right now by virtually every major supplier and shipper, often providing more accurate and timely data about global trade than anyone has ever had. LiDar has changed how scientists can see beneath the canopy of rain forests to survey and map features of the earth that have never been seen before. Engineers at workstations in Silicon Valley can tell farmers on tractors in Salinas about the moisture in their soil on a meter-by-meter basis. Any of us with access to the Internet can find out exactly where satellites are in the sky above, or know about the planes in flight in our airspace. Whether we’re looking up, down, out, or in, at any distance and at almost every scale, we can see more than humans ever have. Add in exponential growth in the power of sensors and networks, doubling perhaps 15 more times in the next 30 years, and the implications are unimaginable.

Data doesn’t just come from traditional sensors or eyes in the sky. We’re increasingly the contributors as well as the beneficiaries. One startup is integrating traditional sources of online information with data sent in by people with smartphones to track food prices in 25 cities. This will allow them to identify price jumps in distant markets long before they show up in government reports. Thanks to the falling price of genetic testing and sequencing, more people are now able to see their own genetic information. That’s personal legibility, but the legibility of populations will also change. Consider: Muhammad Ali has partnered with 23andme to ask people with Parkinson’s disease to contribute their genetic data to a shared database. Over 10,000 people are participating already; the result is vastly increased legibility of the genetic material associated with the disease.

Of course, being able to read almost every system at any distance at just about any second will bring some major challenges. When global systems can connect location, history, social networks, biology and behavior in real time we may long for the relative simplicity of today’s privacy challenges. We will no doubt discover significant risks and weak points in systems that we’ve always taken for granted. We’ll see phantom connections everywhere, and the ground for conspiracy theories will be rich. And we may simply drown in new details, struggling to get back up to the larger perspective and broader view that makes “seeing the big picture” an enduring metaphor for real understanding.

Yet the transformative possibility remains that we will see the big picture with more clarity and resolution than ever before. Whether for good or ill (and surely it will be both), ever greater legibility of everything around us, between us, and even in us, and in every system from the physical to the social, financial, commercial, environmental and more is going to transform our relationship to the world, each other and to every system of which we are part. Billions will have access to it, innovate on it and benefit from it. It will change health care and education, drug discovery and agriculture, mobility and work. It will change how every business operates, how governments govern, and how the social sector makes the world better. Living on the Legible Planet will blow our minds — and if we want to, we’ll find a way to make that legible too.

As a 5-year-old kid, I barely knew what the word rhythm meant. At least no one told me what banging on inanimate objects and creating my own little beats might be called. It was like rhythm chose me and I really had no say in the matter. My favorite elementary school pastime was tabletop drum battles with my friends. I’d play on the table using every part of my hand to get a sound: the base of my palm for low sounds, the middle of my hand for a higher-pitched sounds and then my fingers for fast rolls and pop sounds.

At home, inanimate objects seemed to come alive with the rhythmic time. Oatmeal boxes were my favorite. My parents always thought I just loved oatmeal for breakfast—but I knew that the sooner I emptied the box, the sooner I’d have a cardboard drum.

In regards to a real instrument, I really did not know what I was missing until I was given a pair of bongos as a gift at 6 years old. Wow, it was like a whole new world opened up. I was now playing on the soft animal skin that draped the frame of this wonderful percussion instrument. The sounds resonated like echoes in a canyon and I was on a wonderful journey of rhythm and sound.

Several years later, while walking back to my house from a friendly neighborhood game of padless tackle football, I noticed that there were a bunch of things strewn about on my neighbor’s lawn. As I got closer I realized that those things were six different drums—metal poles, pedals and large metal disks, which I later learned were cymbals—all lying on the lawn waiting to be loaded in for what I now know was a band rehearsal. I asked myself, “How does that guy know how to put those things together. How do you actually play all those drums? I was mesmerized. It seemed impossible.

Unbeknownst to me, my mom and dad would give my first drum set at age 11 and my first drum lesson at age 12. I have been in love with rhythm and the drum set ever since then.

Clayton Cameron is a drummer who is perhaps best known for his brush technique. He got his first big break as the drummer for Sammy Davis Jr.’s big band. He then began a longtime collaboration with Tony Bennett, recording 15 albums with him and touring with him for the same number of years. In 2012, Cameron released his debut album, Here’s to the Messengers: Tribute to Art Blakey. Read more about Clayton Cameron on his website. And watch his talk, embedded above. It gives a (snare drum) crash course in the math behind rhythm.

Maysoon Zayid cracked up the audience at TEDWomen. So for our 30th anniversary, we asked her to reflect on how this year is different than 1984. Photo: Marla Aufmuth

By Maysoon Zayid

This year TED says goodbye to its roaring twenties and hello to the big 3-O. To celebrate TED’s thirtieth birthday, I’m hopping in my DeLorean to take a look back in time. Has the world become a better place since we were introduced to the Sony Compact Disc at the first TED three decades ago, or does 2014 make us yearn for a simpler time when we possessed music, pictures, and books you could actually hold, that existed in reality and not in a Cloud?

When TED was born, I was 9 years old. The year was 1984, Princess Diana gave birth to the spare to the heir, TV sets in America were shouting, “Where’s the beef?” and Ronald Reagan was campaigning to win his second term as President of the USA. Reagan would go on to crush his opponent, Walter Mondale, who had made the epic mistake of trying to use “Where’s the beef?” in a debate with Gary Hart that was not about hamburgers. Co-headlining the losing Mondale ticket, in the role of Vice Presidential nominee, was the legendary Geraldine Ferraro. She made history that year as the first female candidate on a major party Presidential ticket. I was in the fourth grade in Mrs. Corsano’s class at Public School Number 6 in Cliffside Park, NJ, on that Election Day. In the ’80s, schools in my neck of the woods required 2 feet of snow to call a snow day and cancel. I used to walk 7 blocks in a foot of snow to get to school, and I have cerebral palsy. Now if there is a snow flurry, school is closed. This makes for happier kids and parents on the brink of bankruptcy as they are forced to call out from work or scramble for childcare. Unlike 1984, it is now illegal to keep your kids in the car with the windows cracked or your 5-year-old home alone with a choking-hazard key tied around their neck so they can let themselves in. I remember being crushed that the first female Vice Presidential candidate and the man who looked like Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show had managed to win only one state and Washington DC. Thirty years later, Americans have yet to elect a female president or vice president. We have not come a long way, baby, when it comes to the highest office in America.

I also remember racing home from school every day that year to watch General Hospital. At the time, Anthony Geary was the leading man of daytime television. His character’s, Luke Spencer’s, claim to fame was marrying the girl he raped. Luke and Laura’s wedding was watched by over 30 million people. This was my first introduction to rape culture. Thirty years later, I still love General Hospital and I still watch it every day. but instead of running home I DVR it or catch up on YouTube. In 1984, The Cosby Show debuted and changed the face of TV. Three decades later, Hollywood still has a ways to go when it comes to diversity and positive images of people of color; but thanks to shows like Scandal, Switched at Birth, and The Amazing Race it has come a long way since the Cosby days.

The year TED made its debut was a golden year for film. Shirley MacLaine won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role as an overbearing mother in the tearjerker Terms of Endearment. Today, Shirley is still one of the best actresses in the game and is stealing the show in her role as an overbearing mother on the tearjerker Downton Abbey. In 1984, I learned the importance of waxing on and waxing off from Mr. Miyagi and the Karate Kid. I also thanked God that I spent my summer vacations in the war-torn Middle East instead of that horrible small town in Oklahoma that forbid Ren McCormack to dance in Footloose. I even named my Cabbage Patch Kid Ren, and made him dance in defiance to “Karma Chameleon.” My dad scored me and my sisters each a Cabbage Patch orphan off the black market. They were the Xbox One in my day and there was no Amazon or eBay. There was Tillie who sold the coveted Kids out of a suitcase in the parents’ holding pen at Teri’s School of Dance in my hometown and she always delivered the goods.

Maysoon with her family in 1984. She says, “Gotta love the feathers and paneling and my sister’s upside-down-glasses.”

The very first MTV Video Music Awards were broadcast live from New York City’s Radio City Music Hall in ’84. I remember rolling around on the floor imitating Madonna’s legendary “Like a Virgin” routine from the VMA’s and wondering why this infuriated my dad. He was like the Hype Man for abstinence but for some reason he loathed that song. Now, as an adult, I have been introduced to Miley Cyrus and I understand why my mom banned me from watching the VMAs ever again. I wish I had listened because all the brain bleach in the world can’t erase the image of Miley, Beetlejuice and tongues from the movie in my mind. Miley may be the new Madonna, but the real Madonna, like TED, is still here and she is still controversial. 1984 was an epic year for music. Prince made Doves Cry and Tina Turner asked, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Turner had endured years of abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, Ike, and this was her comeback after a lengthy absence from the Billboard charts. Today, Beyoncé, who was heavily influence by Tina, is topping the charts with “Drunk in Love.” In the duet, her husband Jay-Z references the domestic abuse Tina endured; but with a whole different not-safe-for-work subtext. Prince is still making doves cry; but not as often as Justin Bieber makes the world weep.

In 1984, the Olympics had not broken up yet. Back in the day, the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in the same year. The ’84 Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. This was before the break-up of Yugoslavia and before the Kosovo Olympic Stadium became a prime target for bombings. Sarajevo is now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Olympic Stadium has been restored, but the rest of the Olympic Village still bears the scars of war. The ’84 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles in the good ol’ USA and boycotted by the now disbanded USSR. The Soviets skipped the Summer Games as payback for the USA refusing to play in Moscow during the 1980 Games. The United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics because we objected to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Flash forward to 2014: The United States has been in combat in Afghanistan for 13 years, and although there was buzz of a boycott by Team USA due to Putin’s codified hatred for the LGBTQ community, America went to the Russian-hosted Sochi Games anyway. Rather than skip the games, the USA chose to shame the host country on social media with #sochiproblems. One of the saddest stories to come from Sochi was the tale of the extermination of stray dogs and cats strolling the Olympic Village. The silver lining to the slaughter in Sochi was Johnny Weir, NBC’s Olympic correspondent, who showed Vladimir Putin just how beautiful gay can be with his gold headbands and bouffant hairdos. Give that guy the gold, not the gulag.

In 2014, the United States of America’s 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama, entered the homestretch of his second term. In 1984, Jesse Jackson became the first African American male to run for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Shirley Chisholm had beat him to the punch twelve years earlier as the first African American to toss her hat in the ring. Unlike Obama, Jackson failed to clinch the Democratic nomination, which went instead to Walter Mondale. President Reagan, who beat the stuffing out of Walter, failed to recall much of his second term as POTUS. President Obama has no fear of forgetting his final four because everything he says or does is recorded by the fine folks at the National Security Agency.

In 1984, Apple introduced the world to Macintosh, the first mass-market personal computer, through an epic Super Bowl ad. The ad channeled the gray world of George Orwell’s book 1984 and is disrupted by a woman who seems to be wearing a Hooters uniform, shattering the screen with a mallet to symbolically destroy that world. The tag line states, “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like1984.” It is true that Apple did change the scene and that the USA in 1984 was nothing like the book of the same name, but 2014 sure is. Big Brother is watching us from box seats in Utah, and Macintosh is aiding and abetting this criminal, whether they like it or not. Cameras on our computers and voluntary disclosure on social media gives those watching and listening a bird’s-eye view into our private lives. The NSA gathers information from emails to Skype as oblivious Americans type away on their tablets. There are cameras on every corner so Big Brother can know who killed you even though they can’t stop you from being killed. Big Brother can also extra-judicially kill you using drones. In 1984, there were two school shooting in America. In 2014, there were 13 school shootings in the first 40 days of the year.

While privacy is a thing of the past, the personal computer has not been all evil. Thirty years after Mac and TED made their debuts, the world is a far more connected place, thanks in part to both. The Internet has allowed folks from every corner of the globe to watch and listen to the messages shared at TED. Much has changed, but surprisingly some things are still exactly the same. Bruce Springsteen was the Boss in 1984 when his butt debuted on the cover of the iconic Born in the USA album, and he proved he was still The Boss in 2014 when he performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Bruce joined Jimmy to perform a parody of his hit “Born to Run” and mercilessly mock newly re-elected New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie, embroiled in a scandal, was also publicly scolded by the man who was Governor of NJ in 1984, Tom Kean. Luke Spencer is still the leading man on General Hospital and his character is still a rapist, reinforcing rape culture on daytime television. On the bright side, Alex Trebek celebrated 30 years as the host of Jeopardy! and is still phrasing answers in the form of a question to this day.

The thing I miss the most about 1984, that would make me chose it over present day, is feeling safe. At the age of nine, I was allowed to walk to my friend’s house alone. My family and I lived within a stone’s throw of New York City and there was no fear. I do not know exactly when that changed, but now the idea of letting a nine year-old roam the streets of our New Jersey suburb alone is unthinkable. America is obsessed with security. We traded in the Cold War of the Eighties for the bloody wars of the modern day, all in the name of security. We have cameras everywhere, but we are more insecure than ever. The government is openly spying on us and there are millions of guns owned in American households. All of these things are meant to keep us safe, or are deemed necessary for our protection; yet here we are, unable to let our children play in the front yard. Not to worry — most kids today don’t want to go outside to play anyway. They’d much rather stare at the screen of whatever platform Big Brother is watching them from than be out in the sun.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/1984-vs-2014/feed/10MaysoonZayid_2013W_blog_01tedblogguestMaysoon Zayid cracked up the audience at TEDWomen. So as we approached our 30th anniversary, we asked her to reflect on how this year is different than 1984. Photo: Maysoon with her family in 1984. She says, "Gotta love the feathers and paneling and my sister's upside-down-glasses." An update on my non-profit credit rating agency, which could revolutionize how economies are gradedhttp://blog.ted.com/an-update-on-my-non-profit-credit-rating-agency/
http://blog.ted.com/an-update-on-my-non-profit-credit-rating-agency/#commentsFri, 28 Feb 2014 16:11:29 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=86652[…]]]>

Annette Heuser speaks on why the big three credit rating agencies don’t have to have a stronghold on sovereign ratings at TEDGlobal 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

By Annette Heuser

Eight months after my talk at TEDGlobal 2013, much progress has been made on the International Non-profit Credit Rating Agency (INCRA) concept. The progress, however, has not been in the credit rating agency world itself, which is slow to change, despite strong criticism from political officials and, occasionally, the media.

You may recall the public outrage over ratings at the height of the Euro Crisis in 2011 and 2012. Then, the so-called “big three” credit rating agencies ― Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch ― downgraded the US and several European countries. Dramatic headlines renewed public interest in sovereign ratings and the institutions that produce them.
Annette Heuser: The 3 agencies with the power to make or break economies
The attention inspired me to think about a new way to address the sector’s deficiencies. Instead of approaching the problems from a regulatory angle, I developed an institutional model to addresses the shortcomings of this sector’s major players. Transparency and accountability: those are the key components for higher-quality sovereign ratings.

A few colleagues have called me crazy when I told them about my idea for a non-profit credit rating agency for sovereign risk. I took their skepticism as a challenge to see if the INCRA concept could work. In recent months, it’s begun to look more and more possible. At the Bertelsmann Foundation we consider ourselves to be a “think and do tank,” and we feel strongly committed to INCRA.

Recently, we have made progress towards demonstrating that it is possible to establish a non-profit structure for a rating agency in the US. We’ve continued to increase our global network of like-minded credit rating agency reformers who support the INCRA mode. We’ve increased awareness of INCRA among international policymakers and investors in sovereign bonds. And we’ve rallied support from potential INCRA investors in the corporate and public sectors. We are taking an active role in promoting the concept and determining if there is a level of support sufficient to make INCRA a reality.

But why are sovereign ratings important in the first place, you ask?

First, sovereign ratings help assess an enormous market. The value of outstanding sovereign bonds dwarfs that of all other bonds by a huge margin.

Second, as I explain in my talk, the ratings of these bonds affect each of us directly as citizens and taxpayers. Ratings assess a government’s ability and willingness to repay debts. As we have seen in the past, a downgraded government generally must contend with higher borrowing costs. This can translate into higher taxes, cuts to vital government programs and slower economic growth, changes that negatively affect the citizenry. Since sovereign ratings impact us all, I believe that they should be defined as “public goods,” something that is available to all citizens.

This is why my ratings team at the Bertelsmann Foundation has invested considerable time and effort into trying to create a model to address the conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in the ratings process, as well as the inability for the public to determine ratings criteria. The INCRA model would also ensure a truly international entity — not one that could be perceived as American or European. INCRA would give emerging economies and developing countries a role equal to that of industrialized nations. And it would be revolutionary to run a credit rating agency as a non-profit and focus solely on sovereign risk.

INCRA would differ from existing credit rating agencies in both its institutional set-up and its rating methodology. It would operate from a sustainable endowment or on an annual budget. It would rate countries worldwide at no cost to rated entities (governments) or to parties interested in reading the rating reports (e.g., investors). And INCRA would improve the quality of ratings by employing a new set of indicators and making clear how each factors into the overall rating. In addition to the traditional macroeconomic indicators, INCRA examines a comprehensive set of so-called “forward-looking indicators” that mirror a country’s socio-economic development. They assess, for instance, a government’s willingness to invest in education, its crisis-management capabilities, its overall political management and its ability to communicate policies. These are highly relevant, qualitative factors for a solid analysis of a government’s ability and willingness to repay debt, which is the focus of sovereign ratings.

In a nutshell, INCRA is designed to decrease the power of the oligopoly of the “big three” credit ratings agencies by increasing competition; establish a precedent for non-profit players operating alongside traditional, for-profit players; minimize conflicts of interest (and appearances of conflicts of interest) by providing sovereign-debt ratings to the public for free; increase the transparency of the rating process and its outcome; and increase the quality of sovereign ratings by introducing more qualitative indicators.

This project is not a sprint. It is, rather, a marathon to establish INCRA as a cornerstone for a more inclusive international financial system. Although it requires significant effort and stamina, the rewards of running a marathon are great. As Thomas Edison said, “There is no substitute for hard work.”

I hope that you’ll join us in supporting INCRA’s journey to the finish line.

Hacking has always been an important component of healthy democracies. Despite the bad connotation the word often has these days — indicating rogue criminals breaking into computer systems, stealing identities, spying or worse — hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an existing system. And that “system” doesn’t have to be a technical one. Civic hacking, then, is when citizens see something in the public realm they think can work better and decide to take it upon themselves to push for change. It’s about creating something bigger than the sum of its parts. (You can read about the supposed origin of the word here.)

Though Franklin may be the greatest American civic hacker he’s certainly not the only one. Here are a few other citizens who saw a system in need of fixing and decided to make it better for everyone’s good:

Alexander Hamilton: My favorite founding father, Hamilton anticipated the biggest threats to the nascent United States and took it upon himself to make sure they were addressed. He was a main instigator for the Constitutional Convention and famously drafted the Federalist Papers, creating the political will to get the Constitution passed. After that, he set up the financial systems that allowed America to become financially independent from Europe and became our first Treasury Secretary..

Johnny Appleseed: The original guerrilla gardener, John Chapman is a legend for spreading diverse apple species across the American midwest. But his movement was more than about planting trees — he was also spreading a message of civic responsibility for land and nature, and helped spawn the conservation movement..

Harriet Tubman: One of the architects of the Underground Railroad — possibly the greatest civic hack of all time — Tubman was committed to ending slavery. Rather than wait for Congress to take up abolition, she and a network of hundreds freed thousands of slaves by hacking the system..

Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez: The mother and father of the modern labor movement, together they basically invented grassroots, networked organizing. Any good civic hacker knows you can’t get much done without a good organizing strategy. They’re also the inspiration for some of the most empowering grassroots movements of modern times, from gay marriage to the DREAM Act.

Those are just a few of many Americans who saw a way their communities and their country could be better and decided to hack the system to make it better. At Code for America, we’re trying to inspire the next generation of civic hackers by adding technology to our toolbelt. We hope you’ll come join us.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/6-unexpected-historical-figures-with-the-civic-hacker-mindset/feed/9CatherineBracy_2013Z_blog_02tedblogguestCatherine Bracy works at Code for America, where civic hackers help their cities. Here, she points out historical figures who fit the definition of "civic hacker." Photo: Ryan Lash